The article evokes the personality of the Russian writer Aleksandr Issaievici Solzhenitsyn, the great dissident of the Soviet regime. Although concerned with faith, when returned to "unsovietised" Russia in 1994, Solzhenitsyn stayed away from any form of church "enlisting", which showed distrust towards the Russian Church structures. Many of the "Archipelago readers" were confused by this diplomatic prudence, knowing Solzhenitsyn`s enormous contribution to the knowledge of the tragedy of the Russian Church in the seventy years of "militant atheism". His separation from the "official" Church occurred in 1972, when he was already an international celebrity and when intentionally choosing the time of repentance during Lent, he sent to Patriarch Pimen a letter, which became a reference document in the contemporary history of the Russian Church. Forcibly exiled from Russia, against his will, Solzhenitsyn arrives in America. Soon, he will to grow towards the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which Moscow Patriarchate considered "graceless". A question remains: Was Solzhenitsyn a recluse supporting isolationism as a form of ascesis, or the communities he could have joined deliberately kept him away, seeing him as an uncomfortable, suspicious, unpredictable person?

Keywords: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Moscow Patriarchate, church isolationism, communism

BORIS BUZILĂ